American Literature and Culture
American Literature and Culture is our largest area of strength, with numerous PhD candidates working in these fields and an increasing number of PhD graduates now tenured or in tenure lines at colleges and universities around the country. The Americanist faculty is particularly strong in African American studies, with the work of Jennifer James, James A. Miller and Gayle Wald directly focused on African American literature and culture, and with the work of Antonio López and Robert McRuer also sustaining important connections to the field. The program has additional strengths in an array of other fields concerned with the construction of subjectivities and identities in modernity and postmodernity; these include Asian and Asian American studies, postcolonial theory (particularly postcolonial studies of India), women’s studies and gender studies, feminist theory, Latino/a studies, lesbian and gay/queer studies, disability studies, popular culture studies (particularly studies of music and American culture) and composition theory. Doctoral candidates in these fields are completing dissertations on discourses of addiction in twentieth-century cultures, the intersections of Asian American studies and disability studies, the ethics of “standard English” in the composition classroom and many other topics.